"Just one thing after another" - Unknown

StreetCream: The Future Of Fashion

For a marketing class at Universidade Lusofona.

Before there was Google Street Views and shortly after YouTube was launched, I was interested in getting a daily gist from the street scene of cities around the world. This conceptual design is focused on Lisbon but was meant to be used as a template for cities world-wide.

StreetCream is a proposed online street fashion publication. Celebrating creativity in it’s most fashionable forms we will use the medium photography to take readers on the streets of Lisbon and immerse them in a world of breathtaking beauty, color, and style. For some the streets are nothing, for some they are the catwalk. You will see what fashion labels that girl is wearing from head to toe. StreetCream plans to start in the summer of 2009.

Marketing Decision

This is a proposal for carrying out marketing research into the preferences of potential StreetCream readers. We will clarify consumer expectations towards the product. This will help us guide the information and product design decisions to attain maximum reader satisfaction.

Decision Problem

Whether to launch the product? Assess market acceptance for the product.

Street style blogging / journalism is a pop-culture phenomenon that became popular in Japan in 2005 with the FRUiTS Japanese Street Style Magazine. Today there are hundreds blogs covering street style in many of the metropolises of the world. There is no such blog in Lisbon.

Marketing Research Problem

As the proposed research is for a startup, the conclusions will affect the whole concept of the product.

Information I am looking for?
Demographic and Socioeconomic Variables
Age?
Male / Female?
Sexual habits?
Shopping habits?
Disposable income?
Media consumption:
Which blogs does She read?
Identify light users and heavy users.
Values and Opinions
Towards gay marriage.
Technological Capabilities
What you need to know to make the decision?
What should the product be like to attract consumers
To give support to the decision?
Is She my Facebook fan?
Does She follow me on Twitter?
To know if we have enough people interested in the product?
To know the best configuration of the product?

Purpose: Marketing research is carried out in order to clarify consumer needs towards the proposed media product. Understanding potential consumers leads to better information design. We need to fulfill the desires of our use, to have a chance on the marketplace. User Experience, Content, and Placement of the blog must be designed according to those desires.

With limited resources it will not be possible to focus on all platforms. For example having a strong Social Media presence will mean there will not be funds to develop an iPhone application. Developing an iPhone application will mean there are no funds for other mobile devices. So where should we focus?

Thus our main objective is to:

Identify readership preferences towards 1) UX 2) Content 3) Placement

Research Questions

These questions are designed to give a qualitative overview of the possible match between the survey filler and the profile of the target customer.

UX: Huge pictures and no comments? Or small pictures and analysis?
Name
FabrolousFabStreetsSomething else
Tagline
What the Planet Wears Today?
Identify people?
Name (Wallpaper Magazine)Age (Most blogs)Location (Few blogs)
Anonymous people?
Content: Should we concentrate on a certain
Style?
Hipster (Most blogs)EmoFormal (Few blogs)
Age?
Teens18-24 (Most blogs)28-34 (Most blogs)Over 40?
What aspect of fashion should we concentrate on?
BagsShoesHatsShirtsAccesoriesEverything
Should we discriminate by Sex?
FemalesMales
Perspective
Locally orientatedGlobal
Placement: How many readers are engaged with a street fashion content on the
WebsiteRSS ReaderMobile phoneiPhoneTwitterFacebookSomewhere else?

Experience from Street Style Blogs helps us to makes some hypothesis about possible market responses. Public data for blogs.

Measure user numbers for top blogs.

Hypothesis 1: there will be more interest from people outside Portugal.
Hypothesis 2: there will be significant interest from readers of similar blogs in other countries.
Hypothesis 3: there will be no significant interest from random people on the street aged 18-25
Hypothesis 4: Portuguese shops will be interested in advertising on the web page

Content

We expect users to

UX

We expect users to prefer simple designs with large high quality photography. Clear descriptive text to identify objects in the pictures.

probable answer to yout question is…

Research Design

Marketing research is gathered using a systematic approach. The survey includes both primary and secondary research. There are both quantitative questions that give numeric output, and open-ended qualitative questions that are assessed subjectively.

As the product is online, the survey is conducted in the same environment i.e. using online tools. Individual customers will fill out a number of forms adapted to specific questions. After the survey the they will be shown screenshots of other Street Style Blogs placed side-by-side i.e. London besides Sidney besides Istanbul to test their reaction.

Secondary Data

There has been little scholarly or institutional research into street style journalism. The studies that exist concentrate on fashion marketing in general and make few provisions for the particulars of a online marketing and blogging. Moreover, there is no such data available about Portugal and any insights gathered may be inaccurate or culturally biased. The nature and objectives of such data are under question because they are not focused on street fashion.

We have come up with a set of questions to help us formulate an informed opinion about the state of the market. The questions will help us clarify the concept of our product. New insights will be gained towards designing a product better suited to the market. Perhaps most importantly, the survey helps us eliminate impractical or uniteresting ideas and focus on simplifying the product experince.

Primary Data

While there are many questions that could be asked it is also important to keep the survey concise. Otherwise users will get bored and fail to complete the survey. The visual form of the survey has also been given a lot of thought. The design of form field and buttons is oversized to be easily selectable, clear and non-threatening.

It may come under consideration to draw a prise between the completes of the survey. Talks about sponsorship deals with clothes retailers are ongoing.

Part 1: Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.

Part 2: Lifestyle.

Part 3: Attitudes and opinions.

Part 4. Surverying past experiences. While not a representative sample of the readership, these personal choices provide us with user knowledge and individual insights that qualitative research is unable to offer. Moreover, these open ended question may provide insight into the relationships between measurable variables. Concerning research outcome, these questions help us formulate better hypothesis and iterate towards a superior understanding of the readership.

Who. What. Where. When. Why. How.

Survey: Quantitative Research

–Purpose: how many potential readers are there?

–Population and Sampling

–Procedure

Survey: Qualitative Research

–Purpose: How should the blog be designed? Structured? Placed?

–Population and Sampling

–Procedure

Abstract

StreetCream is the proposed brand name for an upcoming street style blog in Lisbon, Portugal.

People are bad at projections. They are especially bad at projecting their own feelings about something that is unclear. People are unlikely to want something they don’t understand. A reliable way of testing user interest is to create a sample, and then survey if they want more of it.

For optimal results, Marketing must work in conjunction with the product design process. That is to say, as design has become iterative, so too must marketing research. To dig deeper into the consciousness of the customer, there must be interaction and follow up.

Measuring customer needs at a particular point in time is not sufficient. Marketing research needs to become live and continuous. Reports that measure something at a specific time have limited use. The Internet is changing too fast for this to work well. People make purchasing decisions in real time. The projections they make for the future are wishful but not accurate.

There are as of now no direct competitors on the Portuguese market. There are fashion magazines and there is event photography. But there is no publication that gives the reader a taste of the streets of Lisbon. Because of the global nature of the Internet, street fashion blogs from all over the world fight for the same eyeballs.The assumption is that the product itself is the strongest marketing tool. On the Internet, the alternative choice is only one click away. Feed readers have augmented this reality, stripping away even the design of the publication leaving only bare content.

Or to use an image, how to from 0 to 100 in the fastest time possible.

High Fashion Trend is all about popular designer brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Christian Dior, Dolce and Gabbana. The Brands found on the Streets though are different. They are the brands found in Shopping Malls. List of brands that could be identified on the Streets.

Changes in design and content will be informed by the proposed research. Targeted at the future StreetCream readership, the research will gain insight into the wants and needs of the reader.

When approved, this research project will enable the creation of knowledge, that will guide the design choices necessary for the successful launch of StreetCream.

Three of the traditional four Ps of marketing are applicable to StreetCream.

The Price of the product is free.
The Place is the URI. Also the placement of the blog in search, directories, and social media.
Product and Promotion as the main influencers of the marketing outcome.

Market: People who Read Fashion Blogs.

Literature Review

Classical Fashion Marketing has been concentrated on print publishing. Street Style blogs are a relatively new part of fashion marketing. The format has been successful in differing countries. One of the most famous blogs, namely The Sartorialist was voted among the most influential fashion leaders in New York City.

The barriers for access are low and it is not easy to become profitable. The paying party of a blog are not the consumers, but the advertisers. The market for StreetCream are not the readers but online retailers, the websites selling clothes on the Internet. They are the ones buy advertisement on the blog.

We expect clear identification of brands in the photographic content is key to winning their interest. While using social media such as Facebook and Twitter we should also recognize brands by using clear titles and descriptions. Linking directly to the products on online shop websites is not recommended.

Fashion brand can be divided into two groups. First, there are the brands that everybody has access to. Generally, the brands seen on the streets are readily accessible to a large audience. Second, there are the luxury brands that have a limited audience. These are aspirational brands with a relatively small consumption audience thus commanding a price premium.

Attachment 1

Fashion brands are characterized by corporate ownership. What are seemingly different shops in the shopping mall often belong into the same group. The following is a list of some of the popular brands and their owners.

Design a blog / pdf with a preview of Lisbon Street Fashion. Question: Do You Want More? Need to make sexy pictures.

The blog must be extremely clearly defined. Because of information noise the ones that are clear are the most memorable.

with original photography from the streets of Lisbon.

The market of a blog are the advertisement buyers. However, this is not true for a startup. Advertisements can only be sold once there is readership. Advertisement sales won’t happen, if there are not enough readers to interest the ad buyer. Starting from that unique startup perspective, the marketing question inevitably becomes:
- how to gain maximum audience in minimum time and cost?

StreetCream Research Proposal

Introduction
StreetCream is a proposed online street fashion publication created by people themselves in through a set of rules that resembles a game. Celebrating creativity in it's most fashionable forms we will use the medium photography to take readers on the streets of Lisbon and immerse them in a world of breathtaking beauty, color, and style. For some the streets are nothing, for some they are the catwalk. You will see what fashion labels that girl is wearing from head to toe. StreetCream plans to start in the summer of 2009.

Marketing Decision
This is a proposal for carrying out marketing research into the preferences of potential StreetCream readers. We will clarify consumer expectations towards the product. This will help us guide the information and product design decisions to attain maximum reader satisfaction.

Background
Street style blogging / journalism is a pop-culture phenomenon that became popular in Japan in 2005 with the FRUiTS Japanese Street Style Magazine. Today there are hundreds blogs covering street style in many of the metropolises of the world. There is no such blog in Lisbon.

Marketing Research Problem
As the proposed research is for a startup, the conclusions will affect the whole concept of the product.

Information I am looking for?
Demographic and Socioeconomic Variables
Age?
Male / Female?
Sexual habits?
Shopping habits?
Disposable income?
Media consumption:
Which blogs does She read?
Identify light users and heavy users.
Values and Opinions
Towards gay marriage.
Technological Capabilites
What you need to know to make the decision?
What should the product be like to attract consumers
To give support to the decision?
Is She my Facebook fan?
Does She follow me on Twitter?
To know if we have enough people interested in the product?

To know the best configuration of the product?

Objective
Purpose: Marketing research is carried out in order to clarify consumer needs towards the proposed media product. Understanding potential consumers leads to better information design. We need to fulfill the desires of our use, to have a chance on the marketplace. User Experience, Content, and Placement of the blog must be designed according to those desires.

With limited resources it will not be possible to focus on all platforms. For example having a strong Social Media presence will mean there will not be funds to develop an iPhone application. Developing an iPhone application will mean there are no funds for other mobile devices. So where should we focus?

Thus our main objective is to:

Identify readership preferences towards 1) UX 2) Content 3) Placement
Research Questions
These questions are designed to give a qualitative overview of the possible match between the survey filler and the profile of the target customer.

Hypothesis
Experience from Street Style Blogs helps us to makes some hypothesis about possible market responses. Public data for blogs.

Measure user numbers for top blogs.

Hypothesis 1: there will be more interest from people outside Portugal.
Hypothesis 2: there will be significant interest from readers of similar blogs in other countries.
Hypothesis 3: there will be no significant interest from random people on the street aged 18-25
Hypothesis 4: Portuguese shops will be interested in advertising on the web page

Content
We expect users to

UX
We expect users to prefer simple designs with large high quality photography. Clear descriptive text to identify objects in the pictures.
probable answer to yout question is...

Research Design

Marketing research is gathered using a systematic approach. The survey includes both primary and secondary research. There are both quantitative questions that give numeric output, and open-ended qualitative questions that are assessed subjectively.

As the product is online, the survey is conducted in the same environment i.e. using online tools. Individual customers will fill out a number of forms adapted to specific questions. After the survey the they will be shown screenshots of other Street Style Blogs placed side-by-side i.e. London besides Sidney besides Istanbul to test their reaction.

Secondary Data
There has been little scholarly or institutional research into street style journalism. The studies that exist concentrate on fashion marketing in general and make few provisions for the particulars of a online marketing and blogging. Moreover, there is no such data available about Portugal and any insights gathered may be inaccurate or culturally biased. The nature and objectives of such data are under question because they are not focused on street fashion.

We have come up with a set of questions to help us formulate an informed opinion about the state of the market. The questions will help us clarify the concept of our product. New insights will be gained towards designing a product better suited to the market. Perhaps most importantly, the survey helps us eliminate impractical or uniteresting ideas and focus on simplifying the product experince.

Primary Data
While there are many questions that could be asked it is also important to keep the survey concise. Otherwise users will get bored and fail to complete the survey. The visual form of the survey has also been given a lot of thought. The design of form field and buttons is oversized to be easily selectable, clear and non-threatening.

It may come under consideration to draw a prise between the completers of the survey. Talks about sponsorship deals with clothes retailers are ongoing.

Part 1: Demographic and socioeconomic characteristics.
Part 2: Lifestyle.
Part 3: Attitudes and opinions.

Part 4. Surverying past experiences. While not a representative sample of the readership, these personal choices provide us with user knowledge and individual insights that qualitative research is unable to offer. Moreover, these open ended question may provide insight into the relationships between measurable variables. Concerning research outcome, these questions help us formulate better hypothesis and iterate towards a superior understanding of the readership.

Who. What. Where. When. Why. How.

Survey: Quantitative Research
--Purpose: how many potential readers are there? --Population and Sampling --Procedure

Survey: Qualitative Research
--Purpose: How should the blog be designed? Structured? Placed? --Population and Sampling --Procedure

Abstract
StreetCream is the proposed brand name for an upcoming street style blog in Lisbon, Portugal.

People are bad at projections. They are especially bad at projecting their own feelings about something that is unclear. People are unlikely to want something they don't understand. A reliable way of testing user interest is to create a sample, and then survey if they want more of it.

For optimal results, Marketing must work in conjunction with the product design process. That is to say, as design has become iterative, so too must marketing research. To dig deeper into the consciousness of the customer, there must be interaction and follow up.

Measuring customer needs at a particular point in time is not sufficient. Marketing research needs to become live and continuous. Reports that measure something at a specific time have limited use. The Internet is changing too fast for this to work well. People make purchasing decisions in real time. The projections they make for the future are wishful but not accurate.

There are as of now no direct competitors on the Portuguese market. There are fashion magazines and there is event photography. But there is no publication that gives the reader a taste of the streets of Lisbon. Because of the global nature of the Internet, street fashion blogs from all over the world fight for the same eyeballs.

The assumption is that the product itself is the strongest marketing tool. On the Internet, the alternative choice is only one click away. Feed readers have augmented this reality, stripping away even the design of the publication leaving only bare content.

Or to use an image, how to from 0 to 100 in the fastest time possible.

High Fashion Trend is all about popular designer brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Christian Dior, Dolce and Gabbana. The Brands found on the Streets though are different. They are the brands found in Shopping Malls. List of brands that could be identified on the Streets.

Changes in design and content will be informed by the proposed research. Targeted at the future StreetCream readership, the research will gain insight into the wants and needs of the reader.

When approved, this research project will enable the creation of knowledge, that will guide the design choices necessary for the successful launch of StreetCream.

Three of the traditional four Ps of marketing are applicable to StreetCream.
The Price of the product is free.
The Place is the URI. Also the placement of the blog in search, directories, and social media.
Product and Promotion as the main influencers of the marketing outcome.

Market: People who Read Fashion Blogs.

Literature Review
Classical Fashion Marketing has been concentrated on print publishing. Street Style blogs are a relatively new part of fashion marketing. The format has been successful in differing countries. One of the most famous blogs, namely The Sartorialist was voted among the most influential fashion leaders in New York City.

The barriers for access are low and it is not easy to become profitable. The paying party of a blog are not the consumers, but the advertisers. The market for StreetCream are not the readers but online retailers, the websites selling clothes on the Internet. They are the ones buy advertisement on the blog.

We expect clear identification of brands in the photographic content is key to winning their interest. While using social media such as Facebook and Twitter we should also recognize brands by using clear titles and descriptions. Linking directly to the products on online shop websites is not recommended.

Fashion brand can be divided into two groups. First, there are the brands that everybody has access to. Generally, the brands seen on the streets are readily accesible to a large audience. Second, there are the luxury brands that have a limited audience. These are aspirational brands with a relatively small consumption audience thus commanding a price premium.

Attachment 1
Fashion brands are characterized by corporate ownership. What are seemingly different shops in the shopping mall often belong into the same group. The following is a list of some of the popular brands and their owners.

Design a questionaire on Google Docs and Spread around
Design a blog / pdf with a preview of Lisbon Street Fashion. Question: Do You Want More? Need to make sexy pictures.
The blog must be extremely clearly defined. Because of information noise the ones that are clear are the most memorable.

with original photography from the streets of Lisbon.

The market of a blog are the advertisement buyers. However, this is not true for a startup. Advertisements can only be sold once there is readership. Advertisement sales won't happen, if there are not enough readers to interest the ad buyer. Starting from that unique startup perspective, the marketing question inevitably becomes:
- how to gain maximum audience in minimum time and cost?

Inspired by the fashion I see on the streets of Lisbon, I decided to create a game with a focus on street fashion.

There's a number of international pages such as lookbook.nu and pages in other countries.

But there's not a single page in Lisbon.

I started out by asking potential readers about the type of fashion they wanted to see. And the types of images, and how often should I post.

The forms created with Wufoo.com were instrumental in getting good results. And Facebook and Twitter allowed me to distribute the survey to plenty of people.

The link: streetcream.com

The Future Of Clothes

Future of Clothes?

One. Animated Clothes

Let's take sharing to a whole new level.

What if I could put my favorite YouTube videos on my t-shirt?

My video-shirt would become prime advertising space.

Because my location could be tracked by GPS, I could be payed by companies for the impressions I made on other people.

Just by walking around.

And I would get extra credit for the people who actually came close and touched my t-shirt.

Painted on jeans.
Two. What if clothes could produce energy if exposed to light. I would charge my mobile phone just by putting it in my pocket. My clothes would catch the solar rays hitting me while walking around. But of course, I would only war it if it looked looked fabulous. Any successful fashion technology should.

Three. What if we did Cradle to Cradle? If my clothes malfunctioned I would take them back to the producer. There my clothes would be disassembled into parts for the next version. I could have beta t-shirts. And I can could go and upgrade at the store. And get a better, newer version.

Four. What if we did an Intelligent Fitting Room? Cisco has already produced an "Intelligent Fitting Room" that displays information about the clothes being experimented in the Mitsukoshi store in Japan and Galeria Kaufhof in Germany. This was done by tagging all the clothes with tiny RFIDs. I can certainly imagine the next step. I would add this information to the my profile. This way I could share my clothes on Facebook. And let friends tell me what they think. And help design different looks (sometimes I'm just horrible at choosing what to buy and wear).

And if there was anything wrong with the apparel, I could easily file a claim or cash in a guarantee right from my profile. This would make for a far more convenient and integrated shopping experience. Because all the clothes my clothes are on my profile, I can look for other clothes that fit my style or go with a particular outfit or theme.

ILets go one step further. If I tracked all the clothes I wore, the system could calculate my preferences and give me feedback about my style. From the shop's point of view, this system would increase sales by increasing the visibility of goods and keeping track of usage of clothes (provided I allowed this) leading to better clothes and more efficient management of the inventory. This is a true intelligent wardrobe!

Five. The way clothes are produced will change. What if clothes could be replicated or printed at home. There is Japanese artist, who has experimented with such designs. Although his works are far from achieving the usability of normal clothes, these are first steps. I would design my own clothes in a 3D software and print them out. More difficult designs could be e-mailed to the company for production and could be picked up at the store.

What would you pay to show your Twitter on my shirt? (Logging into my t-shirt based on hourly rates).

It might be obvious. But it’s worth reminding.

Technologies are not readily and cheaply available in all parts of the world.

That is to say – future is not spread evenly. It is very possible to create that future by looking at what has already been invented elsewhere and applying that technology locally.

Screen culture is not ubiquitous, yet.

3D printing and cheaper, flexible screens embedded within the fabric of the cloth will come mainstream ways to express oneself as well as make money.